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I got tired of Cableco, Inc. tech support identifying my router by mac address and ultimately them telling me to reboot/replace/reset my router rather than trou
by alyandon 3y ago
I got tired of Cableco, Inc. tech support identifying my router by mac address and ultimately them telling me to reboot/replace/reset my router rather than troubleshoot the actual issue.
So, I set my router's mac address to something that matched an ancient IBM mainframe. Fun conversations ensued.
- slt2021 3y agohow were you able to change mac, are you in the US? I thought DOCSIS modems have disabled this function in the US
- alyandon 3y agoSpecifically, the DOCSIS cable modem was rented from the cable company and it was reporting the CPE MAC address that it sees connected to it. In this case, it was reporting the MAC address of my router and the CSR on the phone would look up the brand of the router to provide specific instructions on how to reboot/reset.
- tristor 3y agoI'd love to know more about the fun conversations. Did you blog on this?
- alyandon 3y agoUnfortunately, no. The typical interaction was the CSR requesting that I waste a bunch of time logging into the router, verifying a bunch of settings and requesting that I reboot the thing before continuing to troubleshoot my problem. They'd never take my word for it that I had already verified things before calling in so it was a complete waste of my time. By changing the MAC address of my router, the CSR would generally pause in the middle of their script and ask me what brand router I had. I would tell them I wasn't sure but it was a really big box and said IBM on the side and then they'd give up and continue to the next phase of troubleshooting. I'm a terrible person.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]